Karmic Relationships: Volume 7: Esoteric Studies

By Rudolf Steiner

These profoundly esoteric lectures examine the underlying laws inherent in reincarnation and karma. In Steiner's words, the study of karma is "... a matter of penetrating into the most profound mysteries of existence, for within the sphere of karma and the course it takes lie processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world existence..." This volume focuses on human experiences after death and before a new birth; karma in world history; the cosmic nature of Christ; waking, dreaming, sleeping; and the physical effects of karma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781855844278

Rudolf Steiner

Nineteenth and early twentieth century philosopher.

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KARMIC

RELATIONSHIPS

Esoteric Studies

Vol. VII

RUDOLF STEINER

Nine lectures given in Breslau between 7th and 15th June, 1924

Translated by D. S. Osmond

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Rudolf Steiner Press

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, East Sussex

RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

First edition 1973

Reprinted 2002, 2009

Originally published in German as part of the title Esoterische Betrachtungen karmischer Zusammenhänge, Fünfter Band (volume 239 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 1973

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 427 8

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

I

The Moon sphere and the primeval Teachers of Humanity. Experiences after death. The first seed of karma.

7th June, 1924

II

Experiences after death: in the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere, the Sun sphere, the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. The work of Hierarchies in the forming of karma

8th June, 1924

III

Human souls and their ascent after death through the planetary spheres. Communion with the Beings of the Hierarchies. Our outer world during life on Earth becomes our inner world in our life between death and a new birth. Historical evolution is borne onwards by human beings themselves. Behind the destinies of individual men are the deeds of Gods. Heine, Voltaire, Goethe, Eliphas Levi.

9th June, 1924

IV

The effects of karma in world-history. The working of the Saturn sphere. In all the Beings of this sphere there is an intense, all-pervading consciousness of the Past. The Saturn Beings gaze back upon the memory of all the Beings belonging to the whole planetary system. Individuals whose karma was given configuration in the Saturn sphere. Friedrich Schiller, Ernst Haeckel, Victor Hugo.

10th June, 1924

V

What karma signifies in the individual life of man. The difference in acquaintanceships formed in life is due to the working of karma. Karmic links formed between individuals and groups of individuals lead, as a rule (although there are always exceptions) to contemporaneous existence in subsequent incarnations. Examples of karmic connections: the geometry teacher and Lord Byron. Garibaldi and his ties with King Victor Emanuel, Cavour and Mazzini

11th June, 1924

VI

Three states of the life of soul: waking, dreaming, sleeping; connected with thoughts and sensory impressions, feelings, will. Remembrance and speech. The seven-year periods of life and their relation to pre-earthly existence and the earlier incarnation. The origin of the Youth Movement in the twentieth century. The karma of outstanding figures in history. Haroun al Raschid. Lord Bacon of Verulam. Amos Comenius. Woodrow Wilson.

12th June, 1924

VII

Investigation of karma. The cosmic nature of Christ.

13th June, 1924

VIII

The moments of waking and going to sleep in relation to the karmic past and to karma in process of formation. The forming of karma during sleep. Death at an early age. Therapeutic insights.

14th June, 1924

IX

The effects of our moral conduct and our connection with the Hierarchies in the life between death and a new birth. In the head-formation the karma of a man's past is revealed to sense-perception. In the metabolic-limb system lies future karma, spiritually concealed but invisibly present. The incarnations of Pestalozzi. The cultural task of Anthroposophy

15th June, 1924

Publisher's Note

EDITOR'S PREFACE

During the year 1924, before his illness in September, Rudolf Steiner gave over eighty lectures, published under the title Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, to members of the Anthroposophical Society in the following places: Dornach, Berne, Zürich, Stuttgart, Prague, Paris, Breslau, Arnhem, Torquay and London. English translations of these lectures are contained in the following volumes of the series:

Vols. I to IV. Lectures given in Dornach (49).

Vol. V. Lectures given in Prague (4) and Paris (3).

Vol. VI. Lectures given in Berne (2) Zürich (1) Stuttgart (3) Arnhem (3).

Vol. VII. Lectures given in Breslau (9).

Vol. VIII. Lectures given in Torquay (3) and London (3).

All these lectures were given to members of the Anthroposophical Society only and were intended to be material for study by those already familiar with the fundamental principles of Anthroposophy. The following extract from the lecture of 22nd June, 1924 (see Vol. II) calls attention to the need for exactitude when passing on such contents:

"The study of problems connected with karma is by no means easy and the discussion of anything that has to do with the subject entails—or ought at any rate to entail—a sense of deep responsibility. Such study is in truth a matter of penetrating into the most profound mysteries of existence, for within the sphere of karma and the course it takes lie those processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world-existence, even of the phenomena of nature... These difficult and weighty matters entail grave consideration of every word and every sentence spoken here, in order that the limits within which the statements are made shall be absolutely clear..."

The attention of readers is called to the fact that the fundamental explanations given by Rudolf Steiner of the laws and conditions of karma are contained in Vol. I of the series. Knowledge of the earlier lectures should therefore be regarded as an essential basis for study of those contained in the later volumes.

Lecture One

It is by pointing to all-embracing secrets of cosmic existence that anthroposophical wisdom penetrates most deeply into the foundations of human life, for man is the microcosm in which all these secrets of the Universe are concentrated. The illumination coming from this vista of the Cosmos extends not only into the days but into the very hours of man's life in that it sheds light upon his karma, upon all the things that at every moment closely concern him. And so in these lectures I shall speak from many different angles of the anthroposophical basis of those ideas and conceptions which enable karma in human life to be more clearly recognised.

In man's earthly life between birth and death, two events or moments stand out clearly and distinctly from all others. One of them—it is not, of course, a ‘moment’ in the literal sense but you will understand what is meant—is the moment when as a being of spirit-and-soul, man comes down to earthly life, into a physical body which serves as an instrument for his activity on Earth. Not only does he clothe himself in this physical body but in it transforms his whole nature in order to become active on Earth. This is the moment, the event, of birth and conception—the beginning of earthly life. The other event is that of man's departure from earthly life, when he returns through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

Thinking, to begin with, of this latter event, we know that during the first hours and days after a man's death, the physical form remains preserved to a certain extent. But the question arises: How is this physical human form related to Nature, to the existence surrounding us in earthly life in the several kingdoms of Nature? Is the relation of these kingdoms of Nature, of external Nature as a whole to these remains of the human being such that they would be capable of preserving the structure intact? No, it is not. Nature is able only to destroy the physical form that has been built up since man's entry into earthly life; at death, the form which man regards as that of his earthly existence begins to disintegrate. Anyone who thinks deeply enough about this very obvious truth will realise that in the physical human form itself lies the refutation of the materialistic view. If the materialistic view were correct, it would have to be said that the human form is built up by Nature. But it is not so! Nature cannot build the human form, but only destroy it. This thought makes a very potent impression but one that is often quite wrongly formulated. It remains in the unconscious region of the soul, making itself strongly felt in everything we experience concerning the riddle of death. Now the express aim of Anthroposophy is to bring these riddles which life itself presents to any impartial mind, to the degree of solution necessary for the right conduct of life. Hence Anthroposophy must at the outset direct attention to the event of death.

On the other side there is the event of birth. Impartial self-observation is essential here if a picture comparable to that of death is to be obtained. This self-observation must be deeply concerned with the nature of human thinking. Thinking can be applied to everything that goes on in the physical world. We form our thoughts of what goes on in the world. If we did not do so we could not be men in the true sense for the power to form thoughts distinguishes us from all other beings around us in the realm of the Earth. But impartial observation of our thoughts makes them appear widely removed from the reality of existence around us. When we are engrossed in thought we become inwardly abstract, inwardly cold, in comparison with what we are in heart and soul when we surrender ourselves to life. No impartial mind will ever doubt that thoughts, as such, have a cold, abstract, arid quality. But clear insight into the life of thought should be one of the first meditative experiences of an anthroposophist. In contemplating this life of thought he will discern in it something very similar to the spectacle presented by a corpse. What is characteristic of the sight of a human corpse? As it lies there before us, we say to ourselves: A human soul and a human spirit once lived in this structure and have now departed from it. A corpse lies there as a husk of the soul and the spirit. But at the same time it provides us with proof that the world external to man could never have produced this particular structure, that it could have proceeded only from the soul and spirit, from the innermost core of man's nature, that it is the residue of something now no longer present. In its very form a corpse discloses that it is no truth in itself but only a remains of truth, having meaning only when soul and spirit are within it. In the form that remains a great deal has been lost but a corpse nevertheless shows that it was once the dwelling-place of soul and spirit.

If the eye of the soul is directed to the life of thought, this too, although from a rather different standpoint, will appear to have something corpse-like about it. Impartial observation of our own thinking reveals that in itself it can no more have real existence than the human form can have real existence in a corpse. In apprehending external Nature, there is as little intrinsic reality in human thinking as there is in a corpse. External Nature can certainly be apprehended by thoughts but can never herself produce them. For if Nature in herself were capable of producing thoughts there could be no such thing as logic which perceives, independently of all laws of Nature, what is sound or false in thinking. When we discern what a thought in the earthly world really is, it must appear to us as a corpse of the soul, just as what remains at the death of a human being appears as a physical corpse. The form of a corpse is comprehensible only when we see it as the remains left behind at death by a living man.—Imagine for a moment that there were on the Earth only a single human being, and that at his death a being belonging to the planet Mars were to come down and look at his corpse. It would be utterly incomprehensible to such a being. Were he to study all the forms in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms he would find no explanation of how the form lying there dead could have come into existence. For this form is not only a contradiction in itself, it is a manifest contradiction of the whole extra-human, earthly world. Its very existence betrays that it has been abandoned by something; for by itself it could not exist.

So it is with our thoughts. If external Nature alone were responsible for producing them, they could never be as they are: they are a corpse of the soul, comparable with a physical corpse. The very existence of a corpse is evidence that something has died. What is it that has died in the case of thoughts? It is the kind of thinking that was ours before we came down into the earthly world. Abstract thinking is the corpse of what was once living thinking. The thinking of a soul as yet without a body is related to the form which thinking assumes in earthly existence as the human soul and spirit are related to the corpse. And we men in the physical body are the grave in which the pre-earthly, living life of the soul has been entombed. The thoughts were once alive in the soul; the soul has died to the spiritual world. We bear within us not the living thoughts but the corpse of the thoughts.

This is the picture presented by the spectacle of birth—the side of earthly life opposite to that of death. We speak more correctly than is usual in our time when we say: the spiritual in man dies through birth, the physical part of man dies through death.

If we find the approach to Anthroposophy through pondering on the phenomenon of death and so realising that our thinking is a corpse compared with pre-earthly thinking, our vista of man and of life on the Earth widens and we prepare in the right way to receive the teachings and the wisdom of Anthroposophy. The reason why it is so difficult for men to find the natural path to Anthroposophy is their erroneous conception of what is still present— although as a corpse—in earthly existence. Today they place too high a value upon thinking but do not know what it really is: they know it only in its corpse-like character.

When we guide our thoughts in the direction I have been trying to indicate, the two sides of the eternal life of